Budget 80 inch salisbury axle locker upgrade

[jai_landrover]

Right I have had the idea for some time and having a detroit locker in my 90 is all well and good but its now banned from trials comps :-(.

I must have the ability to lock and unlock the salisbury before an event taking 5 or 10 minutes is no bother it must stay in its form i.e no accidentally locking whilst trialing rendering me a cheat. It must cost as little as possible as I got married earlier this year and having brought a house 4 years ago money is not something I have alot of spare to throw on lockers.The axle must use as little special parts as possible and use std sals shafts.

Locking a diff through the gears is all well and good but presents serious strain through the gears.

Although sals are big and tough if I can not use the gears solely to lock it up would be a great advantage for reliability. I must add the biggist tyres ever going to be fitted to this trialer are 34 inch due to the front cage outriggers giving me a bit more leaway with breakage worrys and the ability to use less expensive equipment.

First of all we used a drive member machined down to fit inside the diff spider: Unfortunatly no pics :-(

Then I had a local machine shop machine out the spider to accept the splined section. My old mans lathe could have done this but it required a 4 jaw chuck swap and we had lots of other little projects on the go so I got it machined and tig welded by a local firm:

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Next we had to try and get the half shaft to engage through the sun gear and into the spider. This i thought would be quite easy again asking the machine shop to machine out some but no they declined as it was so hard.nearly an hour with a dremel and dressing a stone to fit the pillar drill we have something that will work.

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I have aother one to do and then I can reassemble the modified bits into the diff. Next problem the drive member.

We machined as much off in the lathe as possible to get the shaft to be flush with the inside of the sun gear teeth minimizing the ammount we have to push in to engage the spider. I would have had concerns about losing strength however previously we have machined the bejesus out of a defender drive member circa 2-3mm cross sectional area to fit alloys. I went playing and sure enough TWANG We all said yup Too much. But I did an inner shaft (10 spline) so I am not worried about losing a mm or 2 in the next stage on the inside of the drive member to clear the hub nuts.

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Today I have welded and filled a section of drive member drilled and tapped and its now currently being machined in the old mans lathe to clean up to fit the original hub caps.... More to come but it'll be slow.

For those interested its going into this:

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A rebuilt 3.5 Rover powered series 1 1951 sals rear end with above mods. Front end needs to be built eventually custom shafts and defender AEU5522 cv's I have various 4 pin units and ashcroft HD CWP's but working on pegging a few and selling them to the trials guys n gals to fund the eventual locker making it all locked up and ready to roll. Keep it light cannot wait to get it out trialing but time money and weather is killing me at the moment!

[bill van snorkle]

I think you have basically re created the very first version of the McNamara diff lock. But well done for your resourcefulness in being able to do it on the cheap.

[jai_landrover]

I did see a McNamara version well a picture of it with a locking hub that pushed the shaft in and out. Have been toying with the idea on a rover 4 pin diff but decided there is not enough meat on it.

Bill help me out toy axles we had a quick measure and we seem to think there is only 1.5mm dia difference on the 30 spline over a rover 24 CVs fair do's Toyota win. Trying to compare Ashcroft everything to HD toys are they that much more stronger??

My option is to fit HD CVs to the series now aeu5522 seem relatively simple ish to do however toy cvs front seem not too dissimilar and look superior in strength and cheap to upgrade vs ashcroft £600ish I will need special shafts anyhow so plenty of ideas not much cash but time and machining available............ Jai

[bill van snorkle]

I did see a McNamara version well a picture of it with a locking hub that pushed the shaft in and out. Have been toying with the idea on a rover 4 pin diff but decided there is not enough meat on it.

Bill help me out toy axles we had a quick measure and we seem to think there is only 1.5mm dia difference on the 30 spline over a rover 24 CVs fair do's Toyota win. Trying to compare Ashcroft everything to HD toys are they that much more stronger??

My option is to fit HD CVs to the series now aeu5522 seem relatively simple ish to do however toy cvs front seem not too dissimilar and look superior in strength and cheap to upgrade vs ashcroft £600ish I will need special shafts anyhow so plenty of ideas not much cash but time and machining available............ Jai

The Toyota front inner shafts don't really win, as they are marginally smaller than rover ones at the CV joint end, but there isn't a lot in it.

Haven't personally done the conversion Jai, but have read in the past that when fitting hilux centres to L/rover front housings, that a 40 series R/H/Side inner shaft can be used. Some other information in random order. I use 40/60 series CV's in my portal front end because unlike Rover units the CV bells are not through hardened, so can be extensively reworked and welded to without the risk of cracking.Toyota CV joint stars, balls and cages can be fitted into LandRover/ RangeRover CV bells as the internal dimensions are identical and would allow the use of Rover CV bells together with Toyota inner shafts, and save the work in some applications of boring out the Rover stub axles(spindles)and re splining the drive flanges to suit the larger Toy 30 spline stub shafts. I've seen Toyota CV's break just as easily as Rover ones, so IMO there is little to choose between the two, strength wise, but either type can greatly benefit from what I call 'Blueprinting' for want of a better term. This involves dismantling the CV joint and with a Dremel or similar die grinder, dress all the sharp edges and corners of the face of the ball tracks in the bell, the ball holes in the cage and the star including the ends of the internal splines. Welding a 6mm thick steel ring to the face of the bell after reassembly to cover the entrance of the ball tracks will prevent the bell from splitting open when under high loads at or near full lock. The weld bead when cooled off will shrink and the joint will bind, so peening of the bead will relieve the welding stress and the joint will free up again. I've only done this on Toyota bells, so I'm not certain that welding to through hardened Rover bells won't cause them to crack once the bead cools. Someone with better mettalurgical knowledge may be able to advise.

When I worked with McNamara all those year ago, we originally had the Salisbury and Rover type 4 pin crosses specially forged. Later on to reduce costs it was discovered that certain truck universal joint solid blanks could be machined to size and the centre broached out for the half shaft spline.

I have been running a cut and shut L/H/side inner front, hybrid Toyota /Rover half shaft for going on 12 years now in my portalled LandRover and it has done some extremely hard work, particularly while snigging logs around my bushland property. I just bored out a piece of mild steel bar, drilled plug weld holes around the outside,pressed the Rover half in one end, the Toyota half in the other end and plug welded them. I've got a replacement one piece shaft that I had made years ago, but the temporary one looks like it will oulast me.

I can't really comment from personal experience re the Ashcroft CV's, because although they are obviously very strong and have a good rep, I simply cannot rationalise the cost for my purpose when I would still have to shorten and respline the outer stub shafts to suit my portal application.

I hope some of this long winded post is of some use to you JAI.

Regards Bill.

[bill van snorkle]

How much will the halfshaft spline engage with the Spider cross Jai? Bearing in mind that drive flange splines are not case hardened, but can be.

[jai_landrover]

That's the issue they will probably be engaged around 10-12mm both sides almost touching the issues I can foresee is shaft twisting and because the shaft goes in that only 15-18 mm stick through the outer drive flange again maybe twisting and not allowing me to pull the shaft out. Because both sides wil be done I hope the centre weld in the spider should take lttle grief as its locking through the gears I could have brought 1 shaft to go right through which may be the case if this is not up to the job it's simply a cheap try tbh full engagement of the drive flanges would be great but not happening unless I get 2 shafts made with extended splines which again may have to happen.

It's al a try out but your playing with toy CVs is interesting as we tried to mix and match 32 spine inner star for the earlier 23 spline star and the balls were very different smaller and very sloppy we thought maybe an after market item or Lr Changed to smaller balls

Cheers for te info

Much appreciated J